Why Girls Are Weird

by Pamela Ribon

  “I don’t know. Maybe they hadn’t broken up yet.”

  “Maybe not. But maybe they broke up because when we went out and Ian realized that I’m much more fun that Susan Suckass.”

  “I like her new last name.” Dale lit a cigarette for me.

  “I like it too. I made it up myself. I’m special.”

  “Oh, honey. I know.”

  I smoked my cigarette and looked around the bar. This was our favorite little hangout on Fourth Street. We liked it because it was dark enough that we’d recognize people who walked in before their eyes could adjust to the darkness. We could slink back further into our booths or even duck out the back door if we needed to.

  “You really think you broke them up?”

  I exhaled the smoke through my nose as I mulled it over. “Don’t you think it sounds like it? Two dates with Ian and suddenly they’re Splitsville?”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t just use the word Splitsville. And maybe Susan broke up with Ian.”

  “Because she’s jealous of me.”

  “Ooh! When did you develop an ego?” Dale asked, leaning toward me conspiratorially.

  “We can change the subject.”

  “No, I love the ego. It’s about time you started thinking of yourself with some worth. Is it because of Mister Internet?” he asked.

  I felt myself blushing. I had finally broken down about two weeks ago and told Dale about him so I wouldn’t explode.

  “He does help with the ego, yes.”

  “Well, I think he’s a stalker.”

  “He’s not a stalker.”

  “A stranger writes you letters all day long and you don’t consider him a stalker? Didn’t you say he quit his job for you?”

  “Not for me. For his painting. He had some money saved up. Besides, I write him back. It doesn’t count as stalking if I write back, does it?”

  “Have you asked him his real name yet?”

  “Can we talk about something else?” I didn’t want to talk about LDobler too often because I was afraid I’d talk myself out of everything. Seeing how Dale found it freakishly fascinating made me wonder if I should be embarrassed. It was all so narcissistic already. I hadn’t ever been so self-absorbed before, my head in a laptop all day long talking about myself to the world, sharing secrets with strangers.

  “Hey, tell your dad Happy Birthday for me, okay?”

  I choked a bit on my martini. “Shit, you have a good memory. And thank you. I almost forgot to call him before he went to bed.” I’d called twice before, but both times he was at the doctor’s. Mom told me to try again at night.

  “How could I possibly forget when his forty-ninth birthday was one of the strangest weekends I’ve ever had?”

  “It was just golf!” I shouted as I grabbed my cell phone from my purse and headed toward the door.

  “It was creepy! I got a rash!”

  I walked outside to the front stoop of the bar. Mom answered on the first ring. “Hello?” she whispered.

  “Mom?”

  “Hi, honey. I thought it was you.”

  “Is Dad still up?”

  “No, you just missed him. He knows you’ve been trying to reach him.”

  “Damn.” It would have been nice to hear his voice. He was so rarely awake when I called home.

  “I’ll make sure he calls you tomorrow when he’s awake.” Her voice was empty, dull, like someone had scooped everything out of her. I imagined her hunched over the table, a cigarette resting on an ashtray, the smoke making worried lines around her head as it rose.

  “Mom? Are you okay?”

  I heard her make a noise. A crackling sound. I thought my cell phone had cut out on us, but I realized she was just moving her mouth closer to the phone. Her voice had an urgency as she said, “Dad’s going to have to go back to the hospital for a while.”

  I sat on the curb. “Ma, is he okay?”

  Mom sighed. “I don’t know, Anna. I hope so. He’s going to need a blood transfusion and a few tests. We’ll have to see what the doctors say, okay? I’ll call you when we know.”

  “Okay.”

  “Honey, I have to go. I’m just so tired.” I could hear her yawning as we hung up the phone.

  Before anything could sink in, Dale was beside me, holding my purse.

  “Becca called from Spaghetti Warehouse,” he said. “We have to go see her.”

  “Dale,” I started to protest.

  “The bride-to-be is very testy. Besides, I have to talk to her about renting some more equipment. She wants me to film this wedding from more than one angle, and somehow she doesn’t realize that requires more than one camera.”

  “Dale, I really don’t want to. My mom…”

  “Tell me while we walk.”

  Dale tucked my coat under his arm and rubbed his hand through my hair. “I’m starting to really love Betty,” he said with a smile.

  “I thought hair was supposed to grow faster than this,” I laughed.

  Dale and I were breaking rules by going to Spaghetti Warehouse. We promised each other long ago that we’d never eat in a place with license plates on the walls. Dale added the extra rule of never eating at a place that’s also a warehouse. They were pretty good rules. But I had to put in an appearance with Becca since I hadn’t returned her last few phone calls and she wanted to discuss the wedding.

  When I got home late that night, still slightly drunk from bad wine, I couldn’t fall asleep. I was thinking about Dad, wishing that we had more of a history together. I wanted to go back to when things were simpler, when being a daughter meant just doing as I was told and keeping straight A’s. Being a daughter had nothing to do with watching someone slip silently away. I wanted to go back to when a father was someone big and strong, an invincible man who never let anything get in his way. I wanted a tough, fearless dad one more time.

  000029.

  Father Knows Best:

  A Lesson in Automobile Maintenance

  13 NOVEMBER

  I got my first car when I turned seventeen: an ’85 Renault Alliance. It was beige, I think, and was very stained and sad and scary. The speedometer didn’t work. Once you hit 45 mph, it would kick in and point the needle to 98 (the highest number on the dial) and would make a noise like you were revving the engine. The seats didn’t recline, but instead worked like those chairs that lift you when your knees give out. The heater smelled like maple syrup. The stereo didn’t work, and a friend of mine offered to fix it. He removed the entire front panel to get to it, and never was able to put it back on correctly. The battery would die every other week. We’d jump the car, charge the battery, and it would die again. We’d buy new batteries, but they’d still die. All of those things I could put up with, but when the brakes started to fail, I got scared.

  Initially you’d hit the brake and it would fall all the way to the floor. The car wouldn’t slow down at all. You’d have to feverishly pump the brake pedal and eventually it would click with something and jerk the car to a stop. The emergency brake was used in near-death situations.

  I told my dad about the brakes and described the “pump action” I was using to stop the car. He informed me that my cylinder needed “repumping” and he had the perfect solution: Drive the car backwards and pump the brakes, “resetting the cylinder.”

  “I’m not driving home backwards, Ferris Bueller,” I said.

  “Anna K, I’m serious. You pump the cylinder back up when you do that,” Dad insisted, the pop culture reference flying right over his head.

  “Dad. I’ve fallen for many of your tricks. I thought that the reflectors on the street were so blind people could drive. I thought a land shark ripped through downtown Los Angeles, chewing on poodles and killing innocent blondes in bikinis because you told me you saw it on the news. I even for a quick second believed you when you told Shannon the number of spots on a Dalmatian signified how long the dog would live. But this I’m not buying. I’m not driving backwards.”

  My father
has a look that he gives when he wants to prove he’s not lying at all. His eyes widen and his mouth opens just a bit. Usually his fingers will extend and his arms will go out, like he’s in shock. The look says, “How could you even think for a second that I would deceive you?”

  The problem is that Dad is good at faking this look when he is actually lying. If you still say he’s lying after he’s delivered this look, you enter into Phase Two of Dad’s “I am not a liar” dance. The mouth snaps shut. The hands come back down to rest on the chair. He usually kicks the recliner back up and snaps the television on. He’ll stop looking at you and merely say, “Fine. Do whatever. You’re going to do what you want, and if you don’t want my help, then that’s fine. See ya.”

  It’s the “See ya” where you know things have gone sour. This is the point where you have to do whatever it is, because you’re about to be grounded.

  I drove the car to the end of my street, right by the stop sign. I stopped the car, took a deep breath, and popped it into reverse.

  I try to imagine this scene from my father’s point of view. Dad walked out to the front lawn as I was passing at thirty-five miles an hour, my head cranked sharply to the left behind me, trying not to hit any of the cars parked in the street. I had a wild look, and the scream that he heard as I drove past must have been: “Waaaaaaaaaaaaah! NOOOO BRAKES IN REVERRRRRRsssse! Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

  I stopped the car by slowly rolling to a stop on the curb of a neighbor’s yard.

  I walked back to Dad, who was standing on the lawn with his hand on his chin.

  “Were you really pumping the brake?” he asked.

  “Dad, I can’t feel my knee, I was pumping so hard.”

  “Huh.”

  “You wanna try it?”

  Sometimes things work out in your favor. Sometimes you get to see that “Well, I’d like to see him try it” image that you want so badly. Dad must have really convinced himself that this was the way to fix the brake problem, because he took the keys and walked over to the car.

  I ran inside the house shouting, “Mom! Dad’s gonna drive backwards in my car with no brakes because he doesn’t believe me!”

  “Oooh! Oooh! Let me see!”

  We watched Dad drive all the way down the street and slowly stop the car by the stop sign. In order to do this, you had to grind the pedal like you were putting out a cigarette.

  I do wish I had a picture of my dad’s face as the car went traveling backwards down our street. He craned his head back and forth, up and down, forward and backward again, fear frozen on his face in a look that screamed, “I’m going to crash and they’re going to laugh at me.”

  He hit the curb with the back of the car much harder than I did. Once the car stopped, he calmly stepped out, walked up to me, and handed over the keys. He never stopped walking away as he said over his shoulder, “You should get the car looked at. There’s something wrong with the brakes.”

  He went inside, and there was never another word spoken about it.

  Happy birthday, Dad. Thanks for showing me that you can control the truth as long as you believe in it hard enough.

  Love until later,

  Anna K

  000030.

  Subject: You’re Back!!!!!!

  Anna K!

  I missed you! You’re back! You’re back! You’re back!

  You hadn’t written in over a week. Never go away that long again! It made me very sad to be without your words. You are what I do when I don’t want to study.

  Guess what? I’m in Austin this weekend. I know that you might be busy getting ready for Thanksgiving, but if you’re not too too too busy, I’d love to get a cup of coffee with you and meet you face to face! Please? It would make me so happy.

  If you’re busy, I understand. I’m happy you’re writing again. Anyway, I hope you’re well. How’s Ian?

  Love,

  Tess

  -----

  Replying to e-mail was one thing, but meeting someone that read my journal? I didn’t feel ready for that. What if she saw right through me? What if I was disappointing in person? What if I found out that my biggest fan was someone I couldn’t stand?

  -----

  Subject: re: You’re Back!!!!!!!

  Tess,

  I’m afraid I’m really busy with work and getting ready to go home for the holidays. I hope you understand.

  -AK

  -----

  Subject: re: re: You’re Back!!!!!!

  AK,

  I understand. It’s just that I would really like to meet you in the flesh. I want to know what you look like, since you’re my hero these days. My friends all tease me for talking about you so much, but I feel like I’ve known you for a long time. Just one cup of coffee. Please? Consider it an early Christmas present!

  -Tess

  -----

  How bad could she be, anyway? The girl loved me. An hour of coffee and praise couldn’t hurt a Friday afternoon. She was probably harmless.

  And, okay, I was really curious to test out a fan. If all went well with her, maybe I’d be bold enough to meet LDobler someday. If he wanted to. If we wanted to.

  So there I was, just under a week later, sitting out in front of the large, open garage door of the Ruta Maya Coffee House, listening to a jazz trio from inside on the tiny wooden stage. A wintry wind whipped past my face. I sipped my mocha and tried to guess which girl was Tess.

  She was wearing a green beret. Green like she was about to sell me some Thin Mints. Green like I was supposed to think of her as a child. She walked toward me, zoning in on my face, smiling like we were lovers meeting at an airport after a long separation. How did she know it was me?

  “Look! Famous shirt!” She pointed at my chest. I was wearing a shirt I had written about a couple of days ago, saying that the coffee stain on it makes it look obscene.

  “It does look like the cat’s flipping me off!” she said, her eyes wide, her finger inches from my chest. I instinctively leaned back in my chair.

  “Go get some coffee,” I said to her, smiling my friendliest smile.

  “Do you think it’s going to rain?” she asked as she looked up. When her eyes met mine again I saw that she was pouting. The girl was so young and aggressive. She never even said hello—just launched into conversation like we’d known each other for years. I wondered if her heart was racing as fast as mine. I worried briefly that she’d brought a gun and she was going to kill me right here next to the couple playing chess.

  When she came back with a cup of coffee steaming in her hand, I tried to start over in a more recognizable getting-to-know-you pattern.

  “Hi, Tess,” I said. I was still nervous, afraid of saying the wrong thing around her. Then I said with a start, “You’re name’s really Tess, right?”

  “Yep.” She laughed. Her eyes got wider. “You don’t mean your name’s not Anna, do you?”

  “No, it is.” I liked her smile. She had very large green eyes. It was like her entire face was exaggerated. Her cheekbones were rounded. Her hair was blond and short, and flipped at the ends. She looked exactly like what she was: a young girl finishing college who hadn’t had anything really horrible happen to her yet, who thought the best about everyone and wanted to “do good” in life.

  I smoked cigarette after cigarette, letting her do most of the talking. I started to calm down. Since she was chatty, I felt less like I was on display. To the common observer this would look like a couple of girlfriends getting coffee after work and not the winner of the Win a Date With Anna K contest that I was terrified it had become.

  Tess was funny. She’d talk faster than she was thinking and she’d sometimes lose her sentence halfway through. She took big gasps of air before she talked, as if she was about to go underwater to tell me a secret. Her hands moved constantly, and she had a habit of tucking her hair behind her ears over and over again, like it wasn’t staying where she put it. Sometimes she’d talk so fast that she spit.

  “Did it cost a lot to get your bed
fixed?” she asked. “You never said.”

  “What?”

  “The bed. The bed where you and Ian…y’all broke it with the…”

  “Oh! The bed! Yeah!”

  Three months ago I had written an entry about us accidentally breaking our bed during a particularly heated night of sex. I guess there weren’t enough Post-Its to prepare me for this meeting. She was going to catch my lies eventually. I just hoped I was ready with more lies to patch up the holes when she found them.

  “I can’t believe you’d forget that.”

  “I didn’t forget it,” I said. “I forgot I told all of you about it. No, it’s fixed. Sorry.”

  Tess giggled into her café au lait. “I know all sorts of stuff about you. I guess you would forget some things that you tell us.”

  Us. Like she was the leader of my fans. A representative. Like I was leading a nation. A tribe. A cult. It was so unreal.

  “I thought you’d be taller, Anna.” She had her head tilted as she sized me up.

  “I thought you’d be younger.”

  “And you’re quieter than I thought you’d be.”

  “You’re wearing a beret.”

  “You’re making fun of my hat?”

  I started laughing. It probably wasn’t appropriate, as it was too early to be mocking her clothes, but I couldn’t help it. There was tension and anticipation and that anxiety that comes with not wanting to disappoint someone. I couldn’t get over how I was someone with fans, and I was meeting one of those fans and the entire thing sounded like something that happened to someone else.

  Tess pulled the hat off her head and looked at it. “I wasn’t going to wear it, but I didn’t know how else you’d pick me out of a crowd. I mean, everyone here in Austin is pretty young. Except for you, I mean.”

  My mouth dropped open. “No, you didn’t say that!” I shouted.